Friday, April 30, 2010

Time after time, whenever I write or read other sites that discuss diet, nutrition and weight loss, invariably someone will always log in and repeat one of the biggest fallacies ever promulgated: that losing weight is a simple equation of burn more calories than you eat.

Calories Out > Calories In.

As one Anonymous commenter wrote in my last post: "The problem isn't where the calories are coming from so much as the amount."

This is fallacious. gallier2 made some excellent responses with links to Gary Taube's work to back it up.

That being said, I'd like to offer another perspective, from Mike Furci, the fitness expert and columnist for the online Men's magazine, Bullz-eye:

Many so-called experts think there is only one thing that matters when trying to lose weight: calories consumed versus calories used. They try to lead you to believe that a calorie of protein is equal to a calorie of fat is equal to a calorie of carbs, and that all you have to do is cut down the amount consumed to lose body fat. In order for this to be true, the physiological processes by which the human body transforms food into energy – metabolism – would have to be the same for every type of food. This is a simplistic, unscientific and untenable view.

All macronutrients -- including fats, carbohydrates and proteins -- contain energy. The energy contained in food is expressed as calories. We tend to associate calories with food, but in reality, calories apply to anything. For example, a gallon of gasoline contains approximately 31 million calories.

A calorie is the amount of heat needed to raise 1 kilogram of water 1 degree Celsius at sea level. What does this mean? A Double Whopper with cheese contains 960 calories. If we were to burn this burger, it would produce 960 calories -- enough energy to raise 960 kilograms of water 1 degree Celsius.

Calorie is a shortened name for kilocalories, to reflect the simplified math. A kilocalorie contains 1,000 calories, so the Double Whopper with cheese is actually 960,000 calories. Now don't get your panties in a bunch -- this simplified math also applies to exercise calorie charts. If the piece of cardio equipment you're using says you burned 200 calories, it's simplified for 200,000 calories. However, don't rely on exercise equipment charts -- they are grossly inaccurate. This is due to several factors, mainly genetics, because the rate at which individuals burn calories varies greatly and cannot be measured on a piece of cardio equipment.

Calories can and are measured in a sealed device called a "calorimeter" which locks in heat of burning food. A small vacuum container of water is contained above the food. Once the food is completely burned, the temperature of the water is measured. The rise in temperature will determine the amount of calories. While the calorimeter can show the total amount of energy in a serving of Fruit Loops, it cannot account for what the human body doesn't absorb, or the energy used in the digestion and assimilation of it. It also cannot show one's ability and efficiency to use food as energy, as opposed to storing it as fat.

Does counting the number of calories consumed matter, or is it even necessary when trying to lose weight? No! Counting calories is completely inaccurate and a waste of time. Our bodies do not process food like a calorimeter. The assertion that macronutrients are all processed the same between individuals is just foolish. Yet, this is the basis for the calorie theory.

To reiterate...OUR BODIES DO NOT PROCESS FOOD LIKE A CALORIMETER

Does your stomach look like this?

Furci continues:

As discussed earlier, a calorie is not a calorie. A calorie of a carbohydrate does not equate to a calorie of protein when being metabolized in our bodies. Protein calories are not likely to be stored as fat, as compared to carbs, because protein requires more energy to metabolize and assimilate and has numerous functions. Carbs are simply an energy source, and if not used as fuel, they are stored as fat without much effort. Carbs, unlike protein, also stimulate the release of high amounts of insulin, the fat storage hormone.

Tom Naughton, a comedian, was inspired to make a movie called Fathead, after he saw Michael Spurlock's famous anti-fast food film Super Size Me. In it, he offers a simplified animation that demonstrates how eating too much carbohydrates leads to your body storing fat tissue.

Finally, commenter John Smith (Blog author of recklessness and audacity) recommended that people check out the movie Food Inc.

Solid recommendation, brother! I've seen that movie as soon as it was available on Netflix. It basically re-affirmed everything I've studied, researched and applied into an easy to understand film.

That movie details precisely why our food supply and the conventional wisdom regarding diet and nutrition has been so thoroughly corrupted by the fascist conglomeration of big agricultural corporations and their cohorts in the Government.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

The evidence that conventional wisdom regarding the deceptive and misleading mainstream dietary advice is slowly gaining momentum and recognition. A slew of articles have been published recently, all addressing the notion that the emphasis on avoiding saturated fats to promote "heart health" has been wrong all along.

I still remember the first time I saw a low-carb/high-protein diet website that stated emphatically that I could eat as much bacon, eggs, cheese, steak and butter as I wanted, and that I would lose weight while doing so. I thought I was reading a website version equivalent to a tabloid media's cover story regarding Elvis spotted flying in a UFO over the White House.

Our mainstream, anti-saturated fat zeitgeist had been that deeply ingrained into my consciousness. Not only did it take me reading a whole host of websites over a period of about a year to overcome my initial disbelief...but it also took a trip to Europe to see the way they ate bacon, eggs and sausage every single day for breakfast, and I didn't see a society that looks like the people of walmart. Yet, I still expected to step on the scale when I returned home and see some sort of weight gain, since I was eating those high protein/high fat breakfast meals daily for two weeks at the various bed and breakfasts I stayed at.

I actually lost 5 pounds. And this was a trip for which I spent mostly sitting on my ass and driving or riding on tour busses, and drinking beer and whisky at pubs and B&B's like there was no tomorrow.

Only then did the realization truly dawn on me that those websites I had read were right...and that anti-fat, anti-animal protein programming I had been so thoroughly inculcated with was all based on lies and propaganda.

In retrospect, I think the programming about food and diet were even stronger than the cultural programming regarding misandry and feminism.

So now I'm in my 3rd year of eating a nutrient dense diet, and I have never felt or looked better. It is some what gratifying to see the truth is slowly gaining momentum towards mass acceptance.

The problem of course, is the fact that dietary misinformation is absolutely under the control of the Government, non-profit organizations beholden to grant funding, and the giant food processing, agricultural and pharmaceutical corporations who supply that grant funding and campaign contributions who all profit immensely from keeping the public ill informed and malnourished.

Eat less saturated fat: that has been the take-home message from the U.S. government for the past 30 years. But while Americans have dutifully reduced the percentage of daily calories from saturated fat since 1970, the obesity rate during that time has more than doubled, diabetes has tripled, and heart disease is still the country’s biggest killer. Now a spate of new research, including a meta-analysis of nearly two dozen studies, suggests a reason why: investigators may have picked the wrong culprit. Processed carbohydrates, which many Americans eat today in place of fat, may increase the risk of obesity, diabetes and heart disease more than fat does—a finding that has serious implications for new dietary guidelines expected this year.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for any new dietary guidelines put out by the Government-NonProf-Media-Corporate conglomerate. Even if they finally admit that they may have been wrong about saturated fats, they will still find some way to align their recommendations to benefit the bottom line of the food processing and agricultural corporation's bottom line.

Additionally, the State-created cartel of subsidy receivers is heavily biased in favor of grain products. According to this breakdown, between 1995 and 2003, $8.5 billion in U.S. subsidies went to growers of plant-based food crops, while only $5.5 million went to animal products, which means that over 99% of agricultural food subsidies go to plant products. The largest 10% of subsidized farms received 72% of subsidies, but a full 60% were not subsidized at all. As Brian Riedl points out, the $360,000 per year cap on farm subsidies is easy for large farms to pull loopholes through: Tyler Farms of Arkansas collected almost $32 million in farm subsidies between 1996 and 2001 by dividing its farm into 66 individual "corporations."

Not only has the cholesterol hypothesis helped consolidate the government’s ties to the agricultural industry through a shift in the diet away from animal foods and towards plant foods, but doubtlessly the massive level of soy subsidies – soy is the fifth most subsidized crop – has contributed to a surplus to be disposed of, whose result has been the manufacturing of a massive myth that this odd-tasting, highly estrogenic bean is a "health food."

* Whether cooking or making dressings, use the oils that are lowest in saturated fats, trans fats and cholesterol – such as canola oil, corn oil, olive oil, safflower oil, sesame oil, soybean oil and sunflower oil – but use them sparingly, because they contain 120 calories per tablespoon.

* Stay away from coconut oil, palm oil and palm kernel oil. Even though they are vegetable oils and have no cholesterol, they are high in saturated fats.

While it's good to note that more and more people are finally starting to recognize the role that sugar and high fructose corn syrup has played in creating our obesity and heart disease epidemics - I believe the true cause of the obesity epidemic has been BOTH the prominence of both sugar and polyunsaturated fatty acid, Omega 6 rich vegetable oils in all of the processed and convenience, take out and restaurant foods that now make up the majority of the Western diet.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Young King Arthur was ambushed and imprisoned by the monarch of a neighboring kingdom. The monarch could have killed him but was moved by Arthur’s youth and ideals. So, the monarch offered him his freedom, as long as he could answer a very difficult question. Arthur would have a year to figure out the answer and, if after a year, he still had no answer, he would be put to death.

The question? “What do women really want?”

Such a question would perplex even the most knowledgeable man, and to young Arthur, it seemed an impossible query. But, since it was better than death, he accepted the monarch’s proposition to have an answer by year’s end.

He returned to his kingdom and began to poll everyone: the princess, the priests, the wise men and even the court jester. He spoke with everyone, but no one could give him a satisfactory answer. Many people advised him to consult the old witch, for only she would have the answer. But the price would be high; as the witch was famous throughout the kingdom for the exorbitant prices she charged.

The last day of the year arrived and Arthur had no choice but to talk to the witch. She agreed to answer the question, but he would have to agree to her price first. The old witch wanted to marry Sir Lancelot, the most noble of the Knights of the Round Table and Arthur’s closest friend!

Young Arthur was horrified. She was hunchbacked and hideous, had only one tooth, smelled like sewage, made obscene noises, etc. He had never encountered such a repugnant creature in all his life. He refused to force his friend to marry her and endure such a terrible burden, but Lancelot, learning of the proposal, spoke with Arthur. He said nothing was too big of a sacrifice compared to Arthur’s life and the preservation of the Round Table. Hence, a wedding was proclaimed and the witch answered Arthur’s question thus: What a woman really wants, she answered…is to be in charge of her own life.

Everyone in the kingdom instantly knew that the witch had uttered a great truth and that Arthur’s life would be spared. And so it was, the neighboring monarch granted Arthur his freedom and Lancelot and the witch had a wonderful wedding. The honeymoon hour approached and Lancelot, steeling himself for a horrific experience, entered the bedroom.

But, what a sight awaited him. The most beautiful woman he had ever seen, lay before him on the bed. The astounded Lancelot asked what had happened. The beauty replied that since he had been so kind to her when she appeared as a witch, she would henceforth, be her horrible deformed self only half the time and the beautiful maiden the other half. Which would he prefer?

Beautiful during the day….or night?

Lancelot pondered the predicament.

During the day, a beautiful woman to show off to his friends, but at night, in the privacy of his castle, an old witch? Or, would he prefer having a hideous witch during the day, but by night, a beautiful woman for him to enjoy wondrous, intimate moments?

Noble Lancelot, knowing the answer the witch gave Arthur to his question, said that he would allow her to make the choice herself. Upon hearing this, she announced that she would be beautiful all the time because he had respected her enough to let her be in charge of her own life.

The moral of the story?

It doesn’t matter if your woman is pretty or ugly...underneath it all, she’s still a witch.

Socialism is a system where the government directly owns and manages businesses. Corporatism is a system where businesses are nominally in private hands, but are in fact controlled by the government. In a corporatist state, government officials often act in collusion with their favored business interests to design polices that give those interests a monopoly position, to the detriment of both competitors and consumers.

Paul's article goes into detail about how Conservatives and opponents to ObamaCare are actually doing their cause harm by calling ObamaCare "socialist" or opposing Obama's agenda on the grounds that it is based on "socialism."

When he is a called a socialist, the President and his defenders can easily deflect that charge by pointing out that the historical meaning of socialism is government ownership of industry; under the President’s policies, industry remains in nominally private hands.

The key word here is nominally, which is why Paul is advocating that Obama's agenda be correctly called Corporatist.

This also promotes the understanding that though the current system may not be pure socialism, neither is it free-market since government controls the private sector through taxes, regulations, and subsidies, and has done so for decades.

While Paul discusses this in the context of how the ObamaCare is essentially a corporatist act granting a Government enforced cartel to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries...there is another bill pending before congress that has just as far reaching consequences as healthcare.

The Fascists are going after our food supply.

Just who are these fascists? The nominally private corporations like Cargill, ConAgra, Kraft, Monsanto et al. And who are their Government partners in this fascist takeover attempt? The USDA's Food Safety Inspection Services (FSIS).

Why yes...the same folks that brought us the wondrous food pyramid, are now ostensibly going to protect us all from contaminated meat.

A website dedicated to saving small, family farms in the face of the agribusiness corporate fascists, called Farm Wars, discusses the implications of this bill in an article entitled History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job:

Vested interest groups have orchestrated a legislative lullaby to hush the public’s growing unease with the safety of its food supply. Their enablers in the mainstream corporate controlled media amplify a chorus of government officials and non-governmental organizations admonishing that the public must be confident that the food it buys is safe. But having confidence our food is safe is not the same as having food that is safe and wholesome to eat.

The American public has a great and unmet need to understand the true impacts (that is, the predictable consequences) of the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, before the Senates passes its version of this dangerous bill. The US Congress has a long, tragic history of passing legislation that promotes the industrialization of our food supply, effectively implementing the wishes — both stated and unstated — of agribusiness, and it’s about to do it again.

Using the pretext of food safety, those behind the Food Safety Enhancement Act seek to institute changes the American public would not condone if it understood what is at stake. The country is being duped into believing that the pseudo-scientific measures prescribed by the bill will prevent new outbreaks of food-borne illnesses when in reality FSEA will usher in a number of undesirable outcomes, none of which do a thing to improve food safety. On the contrary, these measures will permit large processors to become an essentially unregulated segment of the industry by privatizing the inspection process, and — at the same time — the new regulations will constitute a cost-prohibitive barrier for small players to remain in business, making them easy targets for indiscriminant enforcement and greater market consolidation.

The cost-prohibitive barrier is precisely the objective! Another site also involved in the same fight, offered more details on some of the bills provisions. From FairFoodFight.org:

Expanding an existing program, the FSIS wants to shore up food safety requirements by fully implementing and enforcing its 14 year old HACCP program. What is HACCP? From Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_Analysis_and_Critical_Control_Points

"HACCP is used in the food industry to identify potential food safety hazards, so that key actions, known as Critical Control Points (CCPs) can be taken to reduce or eliminate the risk of the hazards being realized."

This is a good idea, right? A HACCP plan describes the places in a meat processing plant or a butcher shop where food could be contaminated, and it describes what daily and hourly routine steps are taken to prevent that from happening. Cleanings, pathogen tests, pH tests, temperatures, water activity, and other food safety practices are documented by workers and managers to insure that the HACCP plan is being followed. Poultry, eggs, seafood, and juice all require HACCP programs. (Most other FDA products do not.)

HACCP went into effect over a decade ago, but one aspect that was never fully realized was "Verification," that is, proving that a business is following its own HACCP plan, and that's part of what these new FSIS regulations address. The new approach to Verification seeks to "verify" that meat processors are testing for pathogens (among other food safety practices) and documenting those tests in order to prove that their HACCP plan is working.

THE PROBLEM

Local butchers and small meat operations are going to get steamrolled by these requirements.

As just one example, small meat processors will need to collect microbial data for at least one product from each HACCP category that they process (beef, pork, chicken, lamb, etc), under the new Validation program. These products can be grouped (chicken breasts, chicken thighs, chicken sausage), but the similarities and differences in species, process, product public health risk, and food safety hazards might require further testing. If your butcher's meats vary even slightly (various sausages can be significantly different in how they're made from one recipe to another), they may be required to "verify" all their products in each and every category.

This is exasperating and frightening to many meat shops and small- to medium-sized processors. Even small operations offer a wide variety of foods, after all (think about all the cuts and various types of meat you see in your local butcher shop or at a farmers market). But these tests are expensive, so the more cuts and varieties of meats that an operation offers, the more it will cost that butcher to keep selling those various cuts. The obvious solution won't be to invest more money for further testing, but to raise prices, reduce the variety of their product mix, and offer only what sells very well.

Everything I want to do is illegal. As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office.

And it doesn’t stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

ON-FARM PROCESSING

I want to dress my beef and pork on the farm where I’ve coddled and raised it. But zoning laws prohibit slaughterhouses on agricultural land. For crying out loud, what makes more holistic sense than to put abattoirs where the animals are? But no, in the wisdom of Western disconnected thinking, abattoirs are massive centralized facilities visited daily by a steady stream of tractor trailers and illegal alien workers.

But what about dressing a couple of animals a year in the backyard? How can that be compared to a ConAgra or Tyson facility? In the eyes of the government, the two are one and the same. Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn’t matter to the government agents who walk around with big badges on their jackets and wheelbarrow-sized regulations tucked under their arms.

Sure is hard trying to compete with the factory farming corporations here in the land of the fee and the home of the slave, eh?

Our whole culture suffers from an industrial food system that has made every part disconnected from the rest. Smelly and dirty farms are supposed to be in one place, away from people, who snuggle smugly in their cul-de-sacs and have not a clue about the out-of-sight-out-of-mind atrocities being committed to their dinner before it arrives in microwaveable, four-color-labeled, plastic packaging. Industrial abattoirs need to be located in a not-in-my-backyard place to sequester noxious odors and sights. Finally, the retail store must be located in a commercial district surrounded by lots of pavement, handicapped access, public toilets and whatever else must be required to get food to people.

The notion that animals can be raised, processed, packaged, and sold in a model that offends neither our eyes nor noses cannot even register on the average bureaucrat’s radar screen — or, more importantly, on the radar of the average consumer advocacy organization. Besides, all these single-use megalithic structures are good for the gross domestic product. Anything else is illegal.

Never forget the way enforcement works too.

Big Ag corporations who violate the food safety codes that result in recalls, outbreaks of listeria or e. coli, that make consumers sick and even die?

They simply pay large fines to the Government.

Just another cost for doing business...the same fines that literally bankrupt smaller farms.

We the sheeple are caught in a fascist pincer. We get sick and malnourished from our fascist food supply, and we must than seek treatment from our soon to be enacted fascist health care system.

DUCE!

Notable Commentary from the Original Post

amfortas April 28, 2010 at 11:22:

Its funny how American farmers care little about free markets or corporatism of fascism or socialism or any other ism when an Aussie farmer wants to sell beef in the USA. Its funny how ‘free trade agreements’ with America which are designed to remove tarrif barriers always seem to present Australian manufacturers with something else that has a different name but looks remarkably like tarrif barriers as soon as they get within 20 miles of the Pacific coast.

krauser April 28, 2010 at 11:39:

It amazes me how many people fail to see Obama is a fascist. They think you can’t be fascist until you’re goosestepping Jews into the ovens.

crazyshoe April 28, 2010 at 11:50:

So fascists, who were focused on maintaining an inherited Western identity and a society based on class and family hierarchy and structure, are fundamentally in common cause with pro-immigration multiculturalists? I think I’ve heard this before, in every LewRockwell.com and Mises.org article I’ve ever read. But man, what a thrill to hear it again. And again and again and again.

Baphomet

Food supply / food processing one of the most fucked up things about the U.S. Government subsidies and regulations reward sugary, salty, heavily processed food and the healthcare industrial complex benefits from the sicknesses that develop. Health Insurance companies own huge amounts of stock in fast food companies.
Food issues are one of the things i agree with progressives and treehuggers on. I know lots of hippies with basically no money who have found resourceful ways to eat healthy on their lack of budget….

Towgunner April 28, 2010 at 14:56:

Yesterday the Independent (I think it’s a UK based feminized, of course, newspaper) reported on the dramatic reduction of sperm counts within males over the last couple of decades, namely western males. I believe this bill referenced above is related to ‘codex alimentarius’ (Latin for food code), which are broad guidelines developed by and overseen by the UN’s food group defining the standards of nutritional content. Globalman can probably help me with the specifics. People who have looked into codex have revealed some truly satanic things; briefly this “code” reduces the nutritional value per unit in all food. Forgive me, so that’s some “food for thought”.

Back to the Spearhead and feminism: Among many other things, from food additives, processing chemicals, corn feed from GMOs, corn made from GMOs (and then made into corn syrup), plastic packaging i.e. water bottles, wrapping etc all…all contain basic chemical ingredients that induce feminized effects in people (obviously in males). Why is this relevant? Because the feminizing effects of plastics and foods can no longer be denied, you even have a feminized newspaper reporting it. Yet due to corporatism (more so than even feminism who wants nothing more to change men to women and women to men) “they” will never…never address this issue in any appropriate manner. It will be allowed to continue unless we induce a remarkable change in the status quo.

Think about it: these chemicals are indispensable today. They are cheap, accessible and have helped usher in the modern standard of living. However they also enable huge profit margins, that means mega bonuses and stock options for CEO’s, CFO’s and COO’s. Oh, and their financial drug dealers on wall street. Furthermore, feminism has created, as we know, a ‘who cares about males’ environment. As mentioned, feminizing men, regardless if it’s actually toxic, is not only a good thing, it’s a moral thing.

Hestia April 28, 2010 at 15:19:

"Baphomet wrote:Food issues are one of the things i agree with progressives and treehuggers on. I know lots of hippies with basically no money who have found resourceful ways to eat healthy on their lack of budget…."

ITA. Most of what I’ve learn about gardening, seed saving, food preservation, bread-baking, and so forth has been taught to me by elderly folks or hippie "back to the land" friends. If you’re willing to think outside the box, roll up your sleeves, and do some work, you can live quite well on a budget, not only for food, but many other necessities as well.

"Most of what I’ve learn about gardening, seed saving, food preservation, bread-baking, and so forth has been taught to me by elderly folks or hippie “back to the land” friends. If you’re willing to think outside the box, roll up your sleeves, and do some work, you can live quite well on a budget, not only for food, but many other necessities as well."

Bingo. If you want good organic food, hit the local farmers markets and network with the old farmers, small scale organic meat producers and hippies. They know how to get it done.

And money is not the only way to pay for food either. Breaking the law is wrong of course unless you are wealthy, a corporate executive, or a government official, and I would never ever advocate it, but as an academic matter it seems like the local, state, and federal governments would have a difficult time taxing bartering.

It would be very difficult for them to pay for their corporate welfare mass murdering “defense” schemes, continuous violations of civil rights with their welfare job law enforcement apparatus, support of misandric social policies, and other assorted evil deeds without tax funds. We certainly would not want that.

Welmer April 28, 2010 at 21:51:

Keoni Galt wrote: "Some people never seem to get it whenever I post about food/diet related issues."

Can’t please ‘em all. Today we have people complaining that all we write about is men’s issues, and at the same time others questioning why we’d write about anything else.

Personally, I’m all for expanding topics. This site is a place where men can voice their opinions without being swamped by female chatter/writing like the rest of our media. It’s that simple.

Baphomet April 28, 2010 at 22:08:

Hestia- "Most of what I’ve learn about gardening, seed saving, food preservation, bread-baking, and so forth has been taught to me by elderly folks or hippie “back to the land” friends."

Very true. Our elders are excellent resources for this info as well. I actually feel kinda bad for overlooking that.

"If you’re willing to think outside the box, roll up your sleeves, and do some work, you can live quite well on a budget, not only for food, but many other necessities as well."

Absolutely. I actually do quite a few things i’ve learned from the aforementioned hippies, despite that I have the salary to live much more extravagantly if i wanted.

Hestia April 28, 2010 at 22:35:

Baphomet wrote: "Absolutely. I actually do quite a few things i’ve learned from the aforementioned hippies, despite that I have the salary to live much more extravagantly if i wanted."

You must also follow the wise financial philosophy of living *below* your means. ;) More people should. It’s freeing to hoard money & investments rather than "stuff". Of course, such efforts can also allow for splurging when warranted too, which is always a fun thing.

KG, you should discuss the evils of debt and how it’s used to turn us into silly little consumerist slaves in your next post. ;)

DeadEyedSuburbanite April 29, 2010 at 20:05:

I found this article quite interesting, and have often wondered why there are so few articles on the Spearhead about the industrial food complex, peak oil, GMO and other such subjects. I think they will have a profound effect on civilisation in the future in ways we can only guess at right now.

The US government is subsidizing corn to the tune of billions: a crop which requires more irrigation, insecticides and herbicides than any other and the result is a massively obese and unfit population. More and more farmland is being bought up by huge corporations and fewer people are living on farms than ever. Small farmers are being bought, sued or bankrupted out of existence.

The relationship between Monsanto and the FDA is positively incestuous. Monsanto, the company that has actually patented life forms. Scarey.

The Haber-Bosch process: the synthesis of fertiliser from fossil fuels feeds about a third of the world’s population. Two billion people (and growing) depend on fossil fuels to eat.

Meanwhile, most of the US population lives in the suburbs at some distance from their places of work in houses that are temperature regulated by electricity instead of being designed to suit the environment they were built in. The commuting distance is getting further and further. Their clothes, appliances, food and toys are often shipped from the other side of the world. American eats, drinks and clothes itself in oil, which is rapidly running out.

I think these things have the potential to impact men to a far greater extent than many realize.

Monday, April 26, 2010

As I wrote about in two different posts, Your Papers Comrade! and Branding the Sheeple, the Government has been continually working to implement a national ID scheme...which I think is what Obamacare is really about - a trojan horse to get a nationalized database of everyone's medical records.

A few commenters have noted that such efforts have been going on for quite some time, and that it's basically useless to resist, since "THEY" have already got plenty of information on us all as it is.

They probably have a good point.

Big Brother is already here.

One man in the UK, a filmmaker by the name of David Bond, tried to put it to the test as detailed in the Times Online article: Can You Disappear in Surveillance Britain? In it, he details his efforts to try and evade capture by detectives he challenged to try and track him.

Bond might never have thought of running away if he’d not received a letter, some months earlier, informing him that his daughter was among 25 million Britons whose records had been lost by the Child Benefit Office, along with bank details and other private information.He “became obsessed”, Katie remembers, about the amount of information on him and his family that was already out there. As he looked into it, he found that the UK, once a bastion of freedom and civil liberties, is now one of the most advanced surveillance societies in the world, ranked third after Russia and China. The average UK adult is now registered on more than 700 databases and is caught many times each day by nearly five million CCTV cameras. Increasingly monitored, citizens are being turned into suspects. Within 100 yards of Bond’s home, he discovered, there were no fewer than 200 cameras.

Before going on the run, he made 80 formal requests to government and commercial organisations for the information they held on him. He piled the replies on his floor, appalled by the level of detail. The owners of the databases knew who his friends were, which websites he’d been looking at, and where he had driven his car. One commercial organisation was even able to inform him that, on a particular day in November 2006, he had “sounded angry”. It was more than he knew himself.

Remember the last time you called customer support and got some incomprehensible person in India who frustrated you because you couldn't understand their speech? Perhaps they made a note in their system that you sounded angry...

Think of all your accounts for your services and utilities. Computerized, cataloged, and pulled up in a moments notice.

So anyhow, Bond contacted some private detectives and challenged them to try and track him as he tried to "go ghost" in the UK.

“I told them I was making a film about privacy and surveillance, and wanted to be hunted,” he tells me a year later, over cups of tea in his East London home, amid the clutter of a young family – toy bricks on the floor, mashed banana on the table. He wondered if it was possible, in surveillance Britain, to keep himself to himself for a month. “I promised I wouldn’t sue them, whatever they did, as long as they didn’t cause my family any distress. ‘We’ll have you in four days,’ they laughed.”

Bond spent a long time finding the right detectives for his project, talking to countless retired coppers before he found Duncan Mee and Cameron Gowlett of Cerberus. Ordinarily, they work as investigators for major companies and law firms, scrupulously following the letter of the law as they trail organised gangs, often in unstable parts of the world. (If they broke the law, courts would throw out their findings.) The work requires them to penetrate layer upon layer of shell companies and false identities. How hard could it be to find Bond? After all, they’re often asked to find people who might be beneficiaries of a will, and that rarely takes more than a few hours.

After Bond phoned them, the arrangements were finalised by his friend and business partner, Ashley Jones – producer of the film. All the detectives were given was a photo, and the name, David Bond.

So this was not even government officials, but detectives who must follow the letter of the law in pursuing as much publicly available info as possible...

...imagine how much more info a Government agent might have access to?

To begin, they gathered data about him on the internet. He’d deleted his Facebook page, but they retrieved it and much more. This helped them piece together yet more information from public records that require elementary details such as addresses and dates of birth.

I've been thinking of deleting my Facebook page for some time now. While I thought it was cool to see my friends and family that live all over the world, and their pictures and such...I still feel a little uneasy with it - even if it is set to private. I guess it doesn't matter now - even if you delete, I guess a person with the right know-how can find a cache.

Pretending to be Bond, they set up a new Facebook page, using the alias Phileas Fogg, and sent messages to his friends, suggesting that this was a way to keep in touch now that he was on the run. Two thirds of them got in contact. As a result, the investigators were able to crash parties and find out more about Bond in conversation. Mee explains: “At the party, we’d say, ‘How do we know you are who you say you are? How do you know David?’ One guy said he’d been in a band with him, but we pretended to be sceptical and said, ‘Oh yeah? What instrument does he play?’”

They also went through his bins, and later his father’s. From this they were able to piece together huge amounts of detail about Bond. For instance, they guessed that he was vaguely “green” because he printed on the back of documents Katie brought home from her office.

Everything they learnt went up on a wall in their office, forming what they call Bond’s “data wake”. Then they used techniques that would not have been unfamiliar to Sherlock Holmes.

“We looked at what kind of person he was,” says Gowlett, “so we could second-guess what he might do. His family, his education, the films he’s made. He’s a literate guy so we thought of George Orwell and Jura, the island where Orwell wrote 1984. That might be somewhere David would go. We put a pin in the map.”

How fitting that this UK newspaper worked in a reference to Orwell here - the UK has largely become the dystopia that Orwell wrote about. All they need is the two-way vid screens that you cannot shut off, and the surveillance state Orwell predicted will be complete.

Back to the story...

Bond went on a road trip through Europe, trying to find ways of avoiding leaving an electronic trail to be tracked...but eventually his pregnant wife got in contact with him and told him she was having complications and she needed him to go to the hospital with her. The detectives had already found a way to get his wife's hospital appointment schedules, find out who her doctor was, etc. by making ruse phone calls. It was only a matter of time until they caught him.

Tipped off by their colleagues, Mee and Gowlett were waiting for Bond outside the hospital. He’d been on the run for 18 days.

Hmmm...think having a centralized medical record database couldn't be used by the Government to track you?

Immediately afterwards, Bond had what he calls a “weird psychic wobble”. He accused his great friend Jones of conniving with the detectives. “I became potty, behaved in a way I’ve never behaved before.” The next day, at the debrief, Bond had difficulty hugging the detectives. “I was still in a role that felt angry towards them. They seemed smug, happy to have got their man, and I was the idiot who had lost.”

He was appalled to see how much they knew about him, amassed on that wall. “There were huge bulldog clips holding together separate parts of my life – mother, father, schooling and so on. All obvious stuff, but it was more than the sum of its parts. The weirdest thing was the pictures of my mother they’d found in a church. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. I wanted to leave the room.”

On the run, Bond had been maddened by the thought that the best way to elude the detectives was to do the last thing they would expect him to do – which also meant the last thing he would expect himself. He went round and round in circles thinking that if ideas occurred to him – no matter how outlandish – he had to reject them, because the person who had thought of them was him. He hated to admit it, but he had indeed planned a trip to Jura.

Leaving the detectives’ office, Bond used a term to describe his feelings that he’s since concluded is inappropriate, but it gives an idea how strongly he felt at the time. He called it data-rape.

Data-Rape...good term.

I wonder how any of us would feel if we were able to see all of the information that exists for each and every one of us, all right there in front of us, up on a wall or stacked in a pile of documents?

What is this thing called "Privacy?"

Is it long gone...or is it something that never really existed for those of us born within the last couple of generations?

The article finishes with some excellent commentary by the detectives:

“A lot of people are giving information away voluntarily,” says Gowlett. “Look how many young children are giving up their whole lives on Facebook and Twitter – everything, their date of birth, the names of relatives and friends, where they live, when they’re going on holiday and what their political views are.

“People should think carefully how data is going to be used. Some are careful enough to opt out of the electoral roll, but when they have a baby and a nappy company comes round they give every piece of information they’re asked for. And that will be used to tie up with other databases.” Databases such as Tesco’s, which holds information on virtually every adult in the country, regardless of where they shop.

The National Health Service is unrolling a multibillion-pound IT project that will upload millions of patients’ medical records on to a database, freely accessed by 250,000 NHS staff and, to a lesser degree, by private health companies, council workers, commercial researchers and ambulance staff. Letters are going out now, strongly urging us all to allow this and making it as hard as possible to opt out.

The detectives are appalled. “That will have all your medical history on it, your date of birth and everything that has happened to you,” says Gowlett. “It’s vulnerable, and people will be able to get all that information on you in one go.”

In the film, Gowlett demonstrated how easy it already was to pretend to be Bond and get information about Katie’s antenatal arrangements. For Katie, this totally overturned her previous complacency. “I was a bit freaked out that the NHS gave away our appointments,” she says. “I know what David meant about being data-raped.”

Can't wait to have the same data system for our medical records, here in the USA! It will be UNIVERSAL

Thursday, April 22, 2010

These past few days of debating with Pro-Male/Anti-Feminist Tech have been rather productive for myself in clarifying my thoughts and ideas regarding the conspiratorial view of history.

I commend PMAFT for keeping it respectable despite his obvious contempt for the ideas we were debating. As one commenter pointed out, we are certainly on the same side when it comes to a lot of issues discussed in the MRA sphere and at the Spearhead.

But I get the sense that these debates will never get anywhere with PMAFT because he's already made up his mind about this topic. His entire premise is based upon the idea that all arguments for "conspiracy theory" all fall under the rubric of fantastic delusions of paranoia with no basis in reality.

That pointing out the Federal Reserve's role in enslaving the masses into debt slavery, that Private Foundations philanthropy has financed the social engineering of the masses through mass media communications and public schooling curriculum, and that International organizations affiliated with the UN have been working for a long time now to effect globalization and a one world government are all on the exact same level of reality-based discourse as other widely disseminated theories regarding zionist reptilian alien morgellon illuminati raellian satanic-cults who use MK-Ultra techniques to brainwash zombies to spray chem-trails over the nation to infect the populace with H1N1 so that we the Sheeple stampede to the nearest immunization clinic to sterilize ourselves before Obama herds us all into FEMA camps...

...did I forget any other conspiracy theories to conflate my arguments with?

By conflating the issues I've belabored to examine, dissect and emphasize with all of the other fantastic-sounding, syfy channel flavored conspiracy theory, he's essentially attacked a straw man.

You can search my entire archives here as well as re-read my posts on the Spearhead regarding conspiracy, and not find a single mention of any of the more fantastic, SyFy-flavored theories out there. (Oh the delicious irony of referring to conspiracy theory misinformation as "SyFy flavored" considering PMAFT's original firestorm he ignited with his SyFy piece at the Spearhead...)

My discussions have ALWAYS been confined to verifiable, factual evidence that can be researched by anyone with an objective mind and a willingness to ignore the mainstream, conventional wisdom while assessing the veracity of my source material I link to for themselves.

After all, you have to do that precise thing when you objectively research the issues pertaining to feminism and it's societal influence versus the cultural memes most people blithely accept at face value.

I remember before I knew any better, that I used to accept without a second thought that ideas about woman not having the vote, that they shouldn't have the freedom to choose sucking her fetus out of her womb with a vacuum tube, that domestic violence isn't all men's fault, that woman shouldn't have the protection of no-fault divorce, that women should be judged for their sexual behavior, that single mother's are not heroic and victims of deadbeat males and all of the other culturally indoctrinated ideals of feminism where all horrible instances of misogyny and sexism. That was my default position, because I was brainwashed into it.

That was my conditioning being raised in our Brave New World Order culture. These were assumptions that one just "knows" having spent countless hours watching TV and movies, and reading mainstream news magazines and papers, and sitting in public schooling classes and their socially engineered curriculum being crammed down my unsuspecting throat.

But once I realized I had been lied to my entire life...once I took the time and effort to educate myself and measure reality versus the propaganda of mainstream society, I began to see the extent of just how pervasive and ubiquitous lies have been promulgated into mainstream consciousness regarding feminism, gender roles and even the basic assumptions regarding "masculinity."

But once my eyes were opened to these truths, I could not stop there.

So yes, I've read extensively on the topics regarding the NWO conspiracy theory. I've at least spared a few cursory glances on the most fantastic and crazy things out there. Most of them, I read for humor's sake, and quickly moved on to find more substantial fare.

The things I've found had too much foundation in the reality I now clearly see with my own eyes. I began to connect-the-dots to much of what I found credible.

I now quite easily recognize socially engineered, dialectical arguments and themes whenever I read, see or hear them being made and reinforced by popular culture. Read and watch the things I have, and you too will begin to see it clearly.

Finally, if you don't really want to bother with going through all of that...don't take my word for it that their exists a shadow government of elite bankers and philanthropists who want to take over the world in a New World Order...take their own words for it. Take the word of many prominent leaders who undoubtedly where either their puppets or controlled or manipulated by them:

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries." - Senator David Rockefeller, Co-Founder and President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.

"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or *promulgated* , that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this *scenario*, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government." - Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991

"The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government combining supercapitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control.... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent." - Congressman Larry P. McDonald, 1976, killed in the Korean Airlines 747 that was shot down by the Soviets

"In the next century, nations as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. National sovereignty wasn't such a great idea after all." - Strobe Talbot, President Clinton's Deputy Secretary of State, as quoted in Time, July 20th, l992.

"We shall have world government whether or not you like it, by conquest or consent." - Statement by Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member James Warburg to The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on February 17th, l950

"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the Field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it." - Woodrow Wilson,The New Freedom (1913)

"From the days of Sparticus, Wieskhopf, Karl Marx, Trotsky, Rosa Luxemberg, and Emma Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire." - Winston Churchill, stated to the London Press, in l922.

"For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the United States. But, he didn't. Most of his thoughts, his political ammunition, as it were, were carefully manufactured for him in advanced by the Council on Foreign Relations-One World Money group. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared "ammunition" in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people, and thus paid off and returned his internationalist political support.

"The UN is but a long-range, international banking apparatus clearly set up for financial and economic profit by a small group of powerful One-World revolutionaries, hungry for profit and power.

"The depression was the calculated 'shearing' of the public by the World Money powers, triggered by the planned sudden shortage of supply of call money in the New York money market....The One World Government leaders and their ever close bankers have now acquired full control of the money and credit machinery of the U.S. via the creation of the privately owned Federal Reserve Bank." - Curtis Dall, FDR's son-in-law as quoted in his book, My Exploited Father-in-Law

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson." - A letter written by FDR to Colonel House, November 21st, l933

"The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes." - Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1952

"Fifty men have run America, and that's a high figure." - Joseph Kennedy, father of JFK, in the July 26th, l936 issue of The New York Times.

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements, arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the worlds' central banks which were themselves private corporations. The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and the indirect injury of all other economic groups." - Tragedy and Hope: A History of The World in Our Time (Macmillan Company, 1966,) Professor Carroll Quigley of Georgetown University, mentor of Rhode's Scholar and former President Bill Clinton.

"The Council on Foreign Relations is "the establishment." Not only does it have influence and power in key decision-making positions at the highest levels of government to apply pressure from above, but it also announces and uses individuals and groups to bring pressure from below, to justify the high level decisions for converting the U.S. from a sovereign Constitutional Republic into a servile member state of a one-world dictatorship." - Former Congressman John Rarick 1971

"The New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down...but in the end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece will accomplish much more than the old fashioned frontal assault." - CFR member Richard Gardner, writing in the April l974 issue of the CFR's journal, Foreign Affairs.

"I know of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years in the early 1960s to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected, both in the past and recently, to a few of its policies ... but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known." - Dr. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

"This regionalization is in keeping with the Tri-Lateral Plan which calls for a gradual convergence of East and West, ultimately leading toward the goal of one world government. National sovereignty is no longer a viable concept." - Zbignew Brzezinski, National Security Advisorto President Jimmy Carter

"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." - David Rockefeller

"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will.

If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it." - David Rockefeller in his auto-biography "Memoirs"

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

"I’m not getting into whether the Federal Reserve, fiat money, the gold standard, etc. are good or bad ideas."

The entire debate between us was generated by my initial assertion that the basic problem of the Federal Reserve system has resulted in Money = Debt. That our financial system exists solely to trap the average person into debt slavery...as I called it, 21st century Serfdom.

PMAFT also stated that "However, false facts and claims of secret plots by bankers aren’t good arguments. You can argue against the Federal Reserve without pulling a conspiracy out of your ass."

I didn't "pull it out of my ass," I pulled it from having done a lot of reading based on historical accounts behind the writing, lobbying and eventual passing of the Federal Reserve Act in 1913. While debating with PMAFT has caused me to do a fair amount of googling and reading in the past two days, I've been trying to find online sources of The Creature From Jekyll Island for free.

This chapter clearly explains the point I was trying to get across as to how the Federal Reserve System was designed to put all Americans into debt slavery.

First of all, what is the Mandrake Mechanism?

In the 1940s, there was a comic strip character called Mandrake the Magician. His specialty was creating things out of nothing and, when appropriate, to make them disappear back into that same void. It is fitting, therefore, that the process to be described in this section should be named in his honor.

Sounds like an apropos metaphor to me.

The first fact that needs to be considered is that our money today has no gold or silver behind it whatsoever. The fraction is not 54% nor 15%. It is 0%. It has traveled the path of all previous fractional money in history and already has degenerated into pure fiat money. The fact that most of it is in the form of checkbook balances rather than paper currency is a mere technicality; and the fact that bankers speak about "reserve ratios" is eyewash. The so-called reserves to which they refer are, in fact, Treasury bonds and other certificates of debt.

Our money is "pure fiat" through and through.

The second fact that needs to be clearly understood is that, in spite of the technical jargon and seemingly complicated procedures, the actual mechanism by which the Federal Reserve creates money is quite simple. They do it exactly the same way the goldsmiths of old did except, of course, the goldsmiths were limited by the need to hold some precious metals in reserve, whereas the Fed has no such restriction.

The Federal Reserve is candid.

The Federal Reserve itself is amazingly frank about this process.

A booklet published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York tells us:

"Currency cannot be redeemed, or exchanged, for Treasury gold or any other asset used as backing. The question of just what assets 'back' Federal Reserve notes has little but bookkeeping significance."

Elsewhere in the same publication we are told:

"Banks are creating money based on a borrower's promise to pay (the IOU) . . . Banks create money by 'monetizing' the private debts of businesses and individuals."

In a booklet entitled Modern Money Mechanics, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago says:

In the United States neither paper currency nor deposits have value as commodities. Intrinsically, a dollar bill is just a piece of paper. Deposits are merely book entries. Coins do have some intrinsic value as metal, but generally far less than their face amount.

What, then, makes these instruments -- checks, paper money, and coins -- acceptable at face value in payment of all debts and for other monetary uses? Mainly, it is the confidence people have that they will be able to exchange such money for other financial assets and real goods and services whenever they choose to do so. This partly is a matter of law; currency has been designated "legal tender" by the government -- that is, it must be accepted.

In the fine print of a footnote in a bulletin of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, we find this surprisingly candid explanation:

Modern monetary systems have a fiat base -- literally money by decree -- with depository institutions, acting as fiduciaries, creating obligations against themselves with the fiat base acting in part as reserves. The decree appears on the currency notes: "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."

While no individual could refuse to accept such money for debt repayment, exchange contracts could easily be composed to thwart its use in everyday commerce. However, a forceful explanation as to why money is accepted is that the federal government requires it as payment for tax liabilities. Anticipation of the need to clear this debt creates a demand for the pure fiat dollars.

The Federal Government requires it as payment for tax liabilities...

aka - Money = Debt or nothing more than the promise of your future labor.

It is difficult for Americans to come to grips with the fact that their total money-supply is backed by nothing but debt, and it is even more mind boggling to visualize that, if everyone paid back all that was borrowed, there would be no money left in existence.

That's right, there would not be one penny in circulation -- all coins and all paper currency would be returned to bank vaults -- and there would be not one dollar in any one's checking account. In short, all money would disappear.

Marriner Eccles was the Governor of the Federal Reserve System in 1941. On September 30 of that year, Eccles was asked to give testimony before the House Committee on Banking and Currency. The purpose of the hearing was to obtain information regarding the role of the Federal Reserve in creating conditions that led to the depression of the 1930s.

Congressman Wright Patman, who was Chairman of that committee, asked how the Fed got the money to purchase two billion dollars worth of government bonds in 1933.

This is the exchange that followed.

Eccles: We created it.Patman: Out of what?Eccles: Out of the right to issue credit money.Patman: And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our government's credit?Eccles: That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn't be any money.

This is precisely the very reason that was intended when this legislation was written and passed in 1913.

With the knowledge that money in America is based on debt, it should not come as a surprise to learn that the Federal Reserve System is not the least interested in seeing a reduction in debt in this country, regardless of public utterances to the contrary.

Here is the bottom line from the System's own publications. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia says:

"A large and growing number of analysts, on the other hand, now regard the national debt as something useful, if not an actual blessing . . . [They believe] the national debt need not be reduced at all."

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago adds:

"Debt -- public and private -- is here to stay. It plays an essential role in economic processes . . . What is required is not the abolition of debt, but its prudent use and intelligent management."

So what does this all mean when you consider the entire morality of the Federal Reserve system?

Consider the example given:

Centuries ago, usury was defined as any interest charged for a loan. Modern usage has redefined it as excessive interest. Certainly, any amount of interest charged for a pretended loan is excessive. The dictionary, therefore, needs a new definition.Usury: The charging of any interest on a loan of fiat money.

Let us, therefore, look at debt and interest in this light. Thomas Edison summed up the immorality of the system when he said:

People who will not turn a shovel of dirt on the project [Muscle Shoals] nor contribute a pound of materials will collect more money . . . than will the people who will supply all the materials and do all the work.

Is that an exaggeration? Let us consider the purchase of a $100,000 home in which $30,000 represents the cost of the land, architect's fee, sales commissions, building permits, and that sort of thing and $70,000 is the cost of labor and building materials. If the home buyer puts up $30,000 as a down payment, then $70,000 must be borrowed. If the loan is issued at 11% over a 30-year period, the amount of interest paid will be $167,806. That means the amount paid to those who loan the money is about 2 1/2 times greater than paid to those who provide all the labor and all the materials. It is true that this figure represents the time-value of that money over thirty years and easily could be justified on the basis that a lender deserves to be compensated for surrendering the use of his capital for half a lifetime. But that assumes the lender actually had something to surrender, that he had earned the capital, saved it, and then loaned it for construction of someone else's house. What are we to think, however, about a lender who did nothing to earn the money, had not saved it, and, in fact, simply created it out of thin air?

What is the time-value of nothing?

As we have already shown, every dollar that exists today, either in the form of currency, checkbook money, or even credit card money -- in other words, our entire money supply -- exists only because it was borrowed by someone; perhaps not you, but someone.

That means all the American dollars in the entire world are earning daily and compounding interest for the banks which created them. A portion of every business venture, every investment, every profit, every transaction which involves money -- and that even includes losses and the payment of taxes -- a portion of all that is earmarked as payment to a bank.

And what did the banks do to earn this perpetually flowing river of wealth? Did they lend out their own capital obtained through investment of stockholders? Did they lend out the hard-earned savings of their depositors? No, neither of these were their major source of income. They simply waved the magic wand called fiat money.

The power to profit from interest from fiat currency created by nothing more than a mouse-click? That is extraordinary power indeed.

What do you call it when a group of banksters get together to get this system passed off as the law of the land?

We have a little confusion here, for which I realize is due to my own mistake. The Pie Chart I referenced is for % of holder's of Treasury Securities - which I mistakenly attributed to as the total Government debt in my post, Our fiat reality - 21st Century Serfdom.

The Treasury Securities, as you will note, is what the Fed sells or buys to carry out there market operations. Of the total treasury securities (which represents a debt the US taxpayer is liable for), the Fed and other Intragovernmental agencies owns 49.37% of all treasury securities debt issued up to the point in time of the chart in 2008.

Chart 1 reveals the linear connection between the Rothschilds and the Bank of England, and the London banking houses which ultimately control the Federal Reserve Banks through their stockholdings of bank stock and their subsidiary firms in New York. The two principal Rothschild representatives in New York, J. P. Morgan Co., and Kuhn,Loeb & Co. were the firms which set up the Jekyll Island Conference at which the Federal Reserve Act was drafted, who directed the subsequent successful campaign to have the plan enacted into law by Congress, and who purchased the controlling amounts of stock in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in 1914. These firms had their principal officers appointed to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and the Federal Advisory Council in 1914. In 1914 a few families (blood or business related) owning controlling stock in existing banks (such as in New York City) caused those banks to purchase controlling shares in the Federal Reserve regional banks. Examination of the charts and text in the House Banking Committee Staff Report of August, 1976 and the current stockholders list of the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks show this same family control.

Quote: Examining the organization and function of the Federal Reserve Banks, and applying the relevant factors, we conclude that the Reserve Banks are not federal instrumentalities for purpose of the FTCA, but are independent, privately owned and locally controlled corporations.

As for the entire mathematical argument that the Fed doesn't get that much money from their operations because they "return" the profit to the treasury...

Here's the blog posting of a guy who looked up the interest paid back by the Fed to the Government in 2008 -

There is 50+ Trillion dollars of monetized debt in our US economic system. At a 5% interest rate (which I will use in my argument as the average rate of interest that FED banks charge to their customers) that would account for around 2.5 trillion of interest income on issued debt. That is a conservative number because you still need to add T-Bill interest profits, subtract the insignificant 6% divendend income that federal reserve shareholders receive, and then add extra profits that FED banks earn from transaction fees.

Off the top of my head, according to the 2008 US Treasury balance sheet, located on page 5 at http://www.fms.treas.gov/mts/mts1108.pdf , the Government only received about 500 billion in excess interest profits from the treasury in 2008. So, where did the other 2 Trillion of interest go? Should we believe that the banking system requires 2 trillion in operating expenses each year?

With the Federal Reserve banking system having more than 2.5 Trillion a year in profit, how is it even possible that there could be a single bank failure? It doesn't seem possible when we know that they are swimming in 2.5 trillion of profits on interest. It would seem that a not-for-profit corporation such as the Federal Reserve system could easily pay off their liabilities before the excess profits go back to the government. Not so in this case because evidently the tradition is to take additional bailout funds from the government after they pocket the remaining 80% of their interest income. You can't tell me that 2 trillion dollars goes to operating expenses!

This is precisely why the Fed "returns" profit to the treasury - it's a clever trick to fool the people as to what they are really doing.

While I have nothing but respect for him, despite the fact that we disagree on this topic for certain...I can't help but notice that he wrote his latest piece for the Spearhead based on a quote from Barry Goldwater with regards to combating feminism and misandry.

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!-Barry Goldwater at the 1964 Republican Convention

Given PMAFT's serious skepticism regarding "conspiracy" I'd simply like to present to him two other Barry Goldwater quotes...

Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside of the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States.

Ah yes...Goldwater was certainly a wise man - and he basically affirms the main point of my last post.

Here's another one of his quotes:

The Trilateralist Commission is international...(and)...is intended to be the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States. The Trilateralist Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power - political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical.

UPDATE - Heh...so after doing a little more googling, I come to find the original piece that this last quote was taken from.

Goldwater was most certainly a "conspiracy theorist!" Fascinating to see what he writes about here corroborates many, many other sources of NWO conspiracy theory.

Goldwater Sees Elitist Sentiments Threatening Liberties

By U.S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater (1979)

In September 1939, two members of the Council on Foreign Relations visited the State Department to offer the council’s services.

They proposed to do research and make recommendations for the department without formal assignment or responsibility, particularly in four areas - security armaments, economic and financial problems, political problems, and territorial problems. The Rockefeller Foundation agreed to finance the operation of this plan.

From that day forward, the Council on Foreign Relations has placed its members in policy-making positions with the State Department and other federal agencies. Every Secretary of State since 1944, with the exception of James F. Byrnes, has been a member of the Council.

Almost without exception, its members are united by a congeniality of birth, economic status and educational background. The organization itself began in 1919 in Paris when scholars turned their attention to foreign affairs after the end of World War I. It remains a non-governmental private grouping of specialists in foreign affairs. [emphasis added]

A number of writers, disturbed by the influential role that this organization has played in determining foreign policy, have concluded that the council and its members are an active part of the communist conspiracy for world domination.

Their syllogistic argument goes like this: The council has dominated American Foreign Policy since 1945. All American policy decisions have resulted in losses to the communists. Therefore, all members of the council are communist sympathizers.

I believe that the Council on Foreign Relations and its ancillary elitist groups are indifferent to communism. They have no ideological anchors. In their pursuit of a New World Order, they are prepared to deal without prejudice with a communist state, a socialist state, a democratic state, a monarchy, an oligarchy - its all the same to them.

Their goal is to impose a benign stability on the quarreling family of nations through merger and consolidation. They see the elimination of national boundaries, the suppression of racial and ethnic loyalties, as the most expeditious avenue to world peace. They believe economic competition is the root cause of international tension.

Perhaps if the council’s vision of the future were realized, it would reduce wars, lessen poverty and bring about a more efficient utilization of the world’s resources. To my mind, this would inevitably be accompanied by a loss in personal freedom of choice and re-establishment of the restraints that provoked the American Revolution.

When we change presidents, it is understood to mean that the voters are ordering a change in national policy. Since 1945, three different Republicans have occupied the White House for 16 years, and four Democrats have held this most powerful post for 17 years. With the exception of the first seven years of the Eisenhower administration, there has been no appreciable change in foreign or domestic policy direction.

There has been a great turnover in personnel. But no change in policy. Example: During the Nixon years, Henry Kissinger, a Council member and Nelson Rockefeller protégé, was in charge of foreign policy. When Jimmy Carter was elected, Kissinger was replaced by Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Council member and David Rockefeller protégé.

Starting in the ‘30s and continuing through World War II, our official attitude toward the Far East reflected the thinking of the Institute of Pacific Relations. Members of the institute were placed in important teaching positions. They dominated the Asian affairs section of the State Department. Their publications were standard reading material for the armed forces, in most American colleges, and were used in 1,300 public school systems.

The Institute of Pacific Relations was behind the decision to cut off aid to Chiang Kai-Shek unless he embraced the communists, and the Council on Foreign Relations is the parent organization of the Institute of Pacific Relations.

In 1962, Nelson Rockefeller, in a lecture at Harvard University on the interdependence of nations in the modern world, said: “And so the nation-state, standing alone, threatens in many ways to seem as anachronistic as the Greek city-state eventually became in ancient times.”

Everything he said was true. We are dependent on other nations for raw materials and for markets. It is necessary to have defense alliances with other nations in order to balance the military power of those who would destroy us.

Where I differ from Rockefeller is in the suggestion that to achieve this new federalism, The United States must submerge its national identity and surrender substantial matters of Sovereignty to a new political order.

The implications in Nelson Rockefeller’s presentation have become concrete proposals advanced by David Rockefeller’s newest international cabal, the Trilateral Commission.

Whereas the Council on Foreign Relations is distinctly national, representation is allocated equally to Western Europe, Japan and the United States. It is intended to act as the vehicle for multinational consolidation of the commercial and banking interests by seizing control of the political government of the United States.

Zbigniew Brzezinski and David Rockefeller screened and selected every individual who was invited to participate in shaping and administering the proposed New World Order.

In the late 1950s, Brzezinski, an accepted member of the inner circle of academics, asserting the need for global strategies, was openly anti-communist. By 1964, he had modified his criticism of communism. In his prospectus describing the Trilateral commission, David Rockefeller said that he intended to bring the best brains of the world together to bear on the problems of the future.

I find nothing inherently sinister in this original proposal, although the name he gave his new creation strikes me as both grandiose and presumptuous. The accepted definition of a commission is a group nominated by some higher authority to perform a specific function.

The Trilateral Organization created by David Rockefeller was a surrogate -- its members selected by Rockefeller, its purposes defined by Rockefeller, its funding supplied by Rockefeller. Whether or not the approximately 200 individuals selected for membership on the commission represent the “best brains” in the world is an arguable proposition.

Examination of the membership roster establishes beyond question that all those invited to join were members of the power elite, enlisted with great skill and singleness of purpose from the banking, commercial, political and communications sectors.

Nor was the governmental community over-looked. Invitations to join were extended to Sen. Walter Mondale, Gov. Jimmy Carter of Georgia, George Ball, Cyrus Vance, Paul Warnke and Reps. Donald Fraser and John Brademas, among others.

In my view, the Trilateral Commission represents a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power -- political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical. All this is to be done in the interest of creating a more peaceful, more productive world community. I have no hesitancy about judging its wisdom and the results of its actions.

A report presented at the plenary meeting of the Trilateral Commission in May 1975, at Kyoto, Japan, called for an enlargement of central authority and expressed a lack of confidence in democratically arrived at public decisions.

It also suggested that it would be helpful to impose prior restrictions on the press and to restructure the laws of libel to check the power of the press. I”ve suffered as greatly from an abusive press as any man in public life, but I get an itchy, uncomfortable feeling at the base of my spine when someone suggest that government should control the news.

The entire Trilateral Commission approach is strictly economic. No recognition is given to the political condition. Total reliance is placed on materialism. The commission emphasizes the necessity of eliminating artificial barriers to world commerce, tariff, export duties, quota - an objective that I strongly support. What it proposes to substitute is an international economy managed and controlled by international monetary groups.

No attempt has been made to explain why the people of the Western world enjoy economic abundance. Freedom -- spiritual, political, economic -- is denied any importance in the Trilateral Construction of the Next Century.

The Trilateral Commission even selects and elevates its candidates to positions of political power. David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski found Jimmy Carter to be an ideal candidate, for example. They helped him win the Democratic nomination and the Presidency. To accomplish their purpose, they mobilized the money power of the Wall Street bankers, the intellectual influence of the academic community -- which is subservient to the wealthy of the great tax-free foundations -- and the Media controllers represented in the membership of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. It was no accident that Brzezinski and Rockefeller invited Carter to join the Commission in 1973. But they weren’t ready to bet all their chips on Carter.

They made him a founding member of the commission but to keep their options open, they also brought in Walter Mondale and Elliot Richardson, a highly visible Republican member of the Nixon administration, and they looked at other potential nominees.

After his nomination, Carter chose Mondale as his vice president. He chose Brzezinski as his foreign affairs adviser and Cyrus Vance as his secretary of state.

"ACCEPTING THE DEMOCRATIC presidential nomination in New York, CARTER DENOUNCED THOSE "UNHOLY, SELF-PERPETUATING ALLIANCES THAT HAVE FORMED BETWEEN MONEY AND POLITICS."